On 12 August the Australian Government tabled a new AUKUS document in parliament. The Albanese government has cleared the next hurdle in its quest to obtain nuclear-powered submarines. The agreement allows and regulates the transfer from the United States of the nuclear technologies and materials that will enable the Royal Australian Navy to operate and maintain nuclear-powered submarines.
Perhaps the Virginia-class submarines will arrive as planned, perhaps they will not. The only certainty is that it will not be Australia’s decision.
What the government failed to spell out is that this agreement includes iron-clad Australian obligations but no guarantee in return that the US will hand over the Virginia-class boats it promises. In effect, the government has signed on to a redux of the failed and discredited Singapore Strategy of the 1920s and 30s, and in so doing has demonstrated its ignorance of the nation’s past security experiences.
In 1923 the United Kingdom agreed to dispatch the British Fleet to its base at Singapore, from which it would undertake operations against enemy warships that threatened Australia. The Singapore Strategy remained the foundation of Australia’s defence into the Second World War up to the collapse of France. Now facing Germany and Italy alone, Britain informed Australia on 19 June 1940 that the fleet would not sail for Singapore because it was needed to protect Britain’s own territory. Following the Japanese onslaught in December 1941, all the British could spare was two battleships, which were promptly sunk.
The fall of Singapore and Britain’s failure to meet its obligations should be an object lesson for today’s political leaders, yet it is one the government seems determined to overlook. The latest AUKUS agreement is reassuring in tone, impressive in length, and filled with the requisite diplomatic language. However, it affords the United States – in Article 1 – the right to renege at a moment of its choosing without any compensation or redress. The agreement gives the US the unilateral right to cancel the transfer of any technology – including the promised Virginias – if it decides that doing so would pose “an unreasonable risk to its defence and security.”
It is widely known that the US is facing a submarine shortage. American shipyards are producing too few boats while maintenance of the existing fleet takes far longer than it should. To transfer the promised submarines to Australia, the US needs to almost double its build rate while also speeding up maintenance. Otherwise, the US Navy will not have the submarines it needs to deter or fight China. This is why Australia has donated billions to US and UK submarine builders.
Should a future US administration defer or cancel the sale, it will be justified by one of the simplest tenets of international relations.
There is a risk that when the time comes for the United States to sell Australia the promised Virginia boats its leaders will decide their own requirements are more pressing than meeting the ambitions of an ally. US leaders could, at some future point, decide that they need more submarines than in their current plan, further increasing doubt about the wisdom of selling up to five to Australia.
Should a future US administration defer or cancel the sale, it will be justified by one of the simplest tenets of international relations. In 1848, British Prime Minister Henry Palmerston observed that Britain had “no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. General Douglas MacArthur said something similar after he arrived in Melbourne to take command of the allied fight against Japan. He told his hosts that Australia’s sole utility was as a springboard to attack the Japanese and that he had no interest in its larger fate. The United States would always put its own interests first.
At some level, all treaties are scraps of paper and the signatories’ fulfilment of their obligation depends on factors that may only exist at the point of crisis. They are a promise, and promises can be broken, as Britain did in 1940. This is the essence of Palmerston’s saying. What is troubling is that the Australian government has entered into an agreement which provides the party on which Australia relies with ways out that are solely of its choosing. The United States will not be in violation of the treaty if it fails to transfer the Virginias and will therefore suffer no reputational disadvantage. Instead, it will be acting on an option that Australia approved and which is entirely foreseeable.
The new agreement also imposes an obligation on Australia that offers another scenario for derailment of the submarine transfer. Australia has responsibility for the highly-enriched uranium fuel and associated equipment on the Virginias, but does not have a repository for this. It will need to build one. Somewhere in our wide brown land the government must construct and then protect a nuclear storage facility. If Australia does not do this, the United States does not have to transfer the warships.
The fall of Singapore was a traumatic experience for Australia. The nation’s defence policy was revealed to be built on false assumptions that successive governments always recognised but chose not to admit. Now, 90 years later, successive governments are making the nation vulnerable to a repeat performance. Perhaps the Virginias will arrive as planned, perhaps they will not. The only certainty is that it will not be Australia’s decision. This kind of precarity is not the foundation for a sound security policy.
